Fritz Sack

Fritz Sack (born February 26, 1931 in Neumark , Pomerania ) is a German sociologist and criminologist . He introduced the labeling approach into the German criminological and social science discussion.

Career and work

From 1951 to 1954, Sack initially trained as a tax officer and then studied sociology and economics at the universities in Kiel and Cologne as well as at Ohio State University and the University of California, Berkeley . In 1970 he completed his habilitation in “General Sociology” in Cologne and was then Professor of Sociology at the University of Regensburg from 1970 to 1974 . From 1974 to 1984 he taught as a professor at the law faculty of the University of Hanover . In 1984 he accepted the chair for criminology at the University of Hamburg . Sack, who retired in 1996 , was the first sociologist to hold a criminological chair in Germany. He was also head of the Hamburg Institute for Criminological Social Research for many years . From 1996 to 2012 he headed the Hamburg Institute for Security and Prevention Research (ISIP), of which he remains a member. In 1998, Sack was appointed to the newly founded Hamburg Police Commission. The commission was created on the recommendation of the Hamburg Police Parliamentary Inquiry Committee of the Hamburg Citizenship .

Sack is considered to be the leading German exponent of the labeling approach, which was developed in the USA in the 1960s and which he introduced to the German-speaking discussion in 1968 with a book journal. Sack had been a research associate with Walter C. Reckless at Ohio State University during his study stay in 1965/66 , but after a few months had disappointedly turned away from his empirical criminology and learned from Aaron Victor Cicourel and then from Erving in Berkeley Goffman and others are familiar with the ethnomethodology on which the criminological labeling approach is based. According to Sack, this paradigm shift starting in California changed the face of criminology almost suddenly and shifted the "perpetrator" as an " interactionist product " into the background of criminal activity.

Sack thinks that crime can be fully explained by attribution. Crime is a "normal" phenomenon that occurs in all social classes. This differs his radical labeling approach from those of Howard S. Becker and Edwin M. Lemert . Both assume that there is an objective level of fact in addition to ascription processes. The labeling of certain behaviors is highly selective for Sack. The lower classes are criminalized while the rulers do not receive this label. The law becomes an instrument of oppression, class justice prevails .

Sack's theory had had a significant impact on the development of criminology in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1960s. However, the radical nature of his approach generated considerable resistance. Sack was accused of reversing roles and making the perpetrators into ascription victims, who themselves no longer have any role at all as active actors. Trutz von Trotha coined the critical-ironic term "reaction idiot".

Personal

Sack has been married since 1960. He has three children. The journalist Adriano Sack is his son, the media designer Janine Sack his daughter.

Memberships and honors

Sack is a member of the board of trustees of the Working Group on Humane Sexuality and the advisory board of the Humanist Union . The Society for Interdisciplinary Scientific Criminology (GiwK) has been awarding the Fritz Sack Prize for outstanding criminological publications since 2001. On June 1, 2006, Sack was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Crete .

Fonts (selection)

ed. with René König : Criminal Sociology . Akademische Verlagsges., Frankfurt a. M. 1968 (unchanged editions 1974 and 1979)
ed. with Klaus Lüderssen : Seminar: Deviant behavior I. The selective norms of society . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 1975.
ed. with Klaus Lüderssen: Seminar: Deviant behavior II. The social reaction to crime, Vol. 1: Criminal legislation and criminal law doctrine . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 1975.
ed. with Klaus Lüderssen: Seminar: Deviant Behavior III. The social reaction to crime, Vol. 2: Criminal process and penal system . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 1977.
ed. with Klaus Lüderssen: Seminar: Deviant behavior IV. Criminal policy and criminal law . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 1980.
ed. with Klaus Lüderssen: The benefits and disadvantages of the social sciences for criminal law , volumes I and II., Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 1980.
as publisher: privatization of state control: findings, concepts, tendencies . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1995, ISBN 3-7890-4089-4 .
Criminology as a social science. Selected texts , edited by Bernd Dollinger a . a., Beltz Juventa, Weinheim / Bael 2014, ISBN 978-3-7799-2946-8 .

Web links

Literature by and about Fritz Sack in the catalog of the German National Library
Fritz Sack's website
Interview about the “new punishment of society” on Telepolis , 2007
Fritz Sack, Reinhard Kreissl: The punishing society - The state and its last salvation , 1998

Individual evidence

^ Fritz Sack, New Perspectives in Criminology . In: Fritz Sack / René König , Criminal Sociology . Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft., Frankfurt am Main 1968, pp. 431–475.
^ Fritz Sack: Introductory remarks on critical criminology . Revised text of a lecture at the beginning of the lecture series "Critical Criminology and Social Work", 2000, online , there section 3 The jump into critical criminology: some biographical notes , p. 8 ff.
^ Fritz Sack: Introductory remarks on critical criminology . Revised text of a lecture at the beginning of the lecture series "Critical Criminology and Social Work", 2000, online , there section 3 The jump into critical criminology: some biographical notes , p. 8 ff., Here p. 11.
↑ Information on the theory and the criticism of it are based, unless otherwise documented, on Christian Wickert: Radikaler Labelingansatz (Sack) , SozTheo .
^ Trutz von Trotha, Ethnomethodology and Deviant Behavior. Comments on the concept of the "reaction dump" . In: Kriminologisches Journal , Volume 9, Issue 2, 1977, pp. 98-115.
^ Kolja Mensing : Family capital. In: The daily newspaper . June 5, 2004, accessed July 7, 2013.
↑ Advisory Board of the Humanist Union , accessed on October 23, 2017.
^ Fritz Sack Prize , website of the Society for Interdisciplinary Scientific Criminology, accessed on October 22, 2017.
^ University of Crete, Department of Psychology: History of Departmental Activities , accessed October 22, 2017.

personal data
SURNAME	Sack, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German sociologist, criminologist
DATE OF BIRTH	February 26, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH	Neumark , Pomerania

[1] Fritz Sack, New Perspectives in Criminology . In: Fritz Sack / René König , Criminal Sociology . Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft., Frankfurt am Main 1968, pp. 431–475.

[2] Fritz Sack: Introductory remarks on critical criminology . Revised text of a lecture at the beginning of the lecture series "Critical Criminology and Social Work", 2000, online , there section 3 The jump into critical criminology: some biographical notes , p. 8 ff.

[3] Fritz Sack: Introductory remarks on critical criminology . Revised text of a lecture at the beginning of the lecture series "Critical Criminology and Social Work", 2000, online , there section 3 The jump into critical criminology: some biographical notes , p. 8 ff., Here p. 11.

[4] Information on the theory and the criticism of it are based, unless otherwise documented, on Christian Wickert: Radikaler Labelingansatz (Sack) , SozTheo .

[5] Trutz von Trotha, Ethnomethodology and Deviant Behavior. Comments on the concept of the "reaction dump" . In: Kriminologisches Journal , Volume 9, Issue 2, 1977, pp. 98-115.

[6] Kolja Mensing : Family capital. In: The daily newspaper . June 5, 2004, accessed July 7, 2013.

[7] Advisory Board of the Humanist Union , accessed on October 23, 2017.

[8] Fritz Sack Prize , website of the Society for Interdisciplinary Scientific Criminology, accessed on October 22, 2017.

[9] University of Crete, Department of Psychology: History of Departmental Activities , accessed October 22, 2017.